A survey among 21 countries carried out by Statista Consumer Insights has found that respondents from emerging economies are more likely to be working towards a degree online. 21 percent in South Africa, 19 percent in India, and 12 percent in Brazil said they had done so in the 12 months before the survey. Academic online education was also popular in Australia at 8 percent and the U.S. at 7 percent, while in European countries as well as Japan, fewer engaged in the practice. China also only had a share of 7 percent saying they had done degree-related coursework online recently.
Preference for online education in emerging economies could have to do with less availability of suitable programs nearby, a more fragmented higher education landscape with many smaller operators, or the necessity of many to work while in school. For older, non-traditional students or those returning to school, an online degree is often more suitable, especially if sticking with one's job while enrolling.
The UK's Oxford University was named the world's best university in the latest global ranking released by Times Higher Education on Wednesday. While the UK features quite heavily at the upper end of the list, it's the United States that utterly dominates it. 23 of the 50 best universities in the world are located in the country, according to the ranking, while 7 are in the United Kingdom, also including the University of Cambridge and the Imperial College of London. China has four entries in the top 50, including Beijing's Tsinghua and Peking universities as well as Shanghai's Fudan University and Hangzhou's Zhejiang University. Three institutions out of the top 50 are found in Canada and Germany, respectively, while two each hail from Switzerland, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The top 50 also included one school each from France, Japan, Belgium, Australia, and Sweden.
The ranking is based on five indicators (teaching, research environment, research quality, international outlook, and industry). Reducing to the first 30 ranks, the U.S. has an incredible 17 universities inside the top 30 - compared to the UK's five and China's two.
The OECD's latest Education at a Glance report has found that England has the highest university tuition fees in the world on the bachelor level. The average tuition cost for nationals for a year at an English university even surpassed that of the United States by as much as 37 percent when adjusting for the cost of living. This is even though England calculated its figure based on two and three-year degrees, while the United States excludes so-called short-cycle degrees (which cost on average only around $3,500 per year on a PPP basis). Even on the master's level, a U.S. degree was relatively cheaper at just around $12,600 per year on average with PPP taken into account than England's $13,100 for a year of bachelor studies.
OECD countries tend to have different approaches to financing a university education with many nations joining England and the United States in charging relatively high tuition fees, while around a third is not charging any fees at the bachelor or equivalent level. England, the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Lithuania, and South Korea all have tuition fees over $5,000 PPP. Chile was not reporting to the 2022/23 edition but also showed annual fees in the thousands in earlier editions. Countries in continental Europe like Spain, France, and Germany all tended to have far lower fees by comparison, while Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland have no fees at all.
England's tuition fees weren't always so high, however. Since the beginning of the 2000s, annual costs have increased by more than 700 percent.
The latest global university ranking has been released by Times Higher Education, putting the UK's Oxford University at the top of the pile once again. Institutions are ranked based on five indicators: teaching, research environment, research quality, international outlook, and industry income/patents.
On this basis, the United Kingdom and the United States completely dominate the top of the list, with no universities from other countries in the top 10 and only around 20 out of the top 50 universities in the world located in other countries. The best-performing among them is Switzerland's ETH Zurich ranked 11, which focuses on STEM subjects. This is followed by two Beijing schools in ranks 12 and 13. Further down, schools from Singapore, Canada, Germany, and Hong Kong make appearances in the top 50 of the world's best universities, as well as one school each from Australia, France, Belgium, and Japan.
Other countries with many universities present in the ranking only start to appear much lower on the list. Apart from Japan and China, which rank throughout, India has 107 entries starting withthe Indian Institute of Science in the upper 200s (and the Indian Institute of Technology only in the 500s). Turkey and Iran have 91 and 81 entries each, the highest being Koç University in the lower 300s and Sharif University of Technology in the upper 300s, respectively.